The Beginning of the End
A young flame-haired man of twenty sat sprawled in his faded armchair, absently picking at the threads of a frayed patch on its arm. Across the room his older brothers squabbled about some new plan, fingers jabbing at points on the blueprints spread across the table at which they sat. Occasionally snatches of their conversation reached him, squeezing through the shrieking on either side of him into his ears. His onetime girlfriend Hermione Granger and his younger sister sat to either side of him, arguing over the latest Rita Skeeter article in the Prophet.
"Look Ginny I just don't see how you can believe this drivel!" Hermione said angrily, shaking the article in question at her.
"How can you not believe it?" Ginny countered shrilly, glaring daggers at the older girl. "It says, quite clearly that H-"
"Since when did you believe anything that woman writes?!" Hermione exclaimed. Ron sank further into his chair, trying very hard to shut out the conversation flowing over his head. "Look, can you two shriek a little less loudly please? My ears are getting a battering here!" which earned him a dirty look from both sides, and they continued right where they left off.
"It says-"
"Hmph!"
"It says here that Harry Potter has been seen by eyewitnesses in Austria, fighting off a dozen death eaters, saving a family of six from them. Eyewitnesses Hermione! She cant have made that up!" Ginny said triumphantly, slapping the paper down on the sofa she sat on. Hermione took a deep breath and forced herself to be calm.
She spoke in a softer voice "Ginny, you know how many 'sightings' there's been of Harry these last three years. And you know how many are real - none. Not one reliable witness, only some fanciful tale and then a week of torture for us here as we have this argument over and over again - but face it Ginny -he's not coming back" Hermione said bitterly "He ran away, just-"
"No! Hermione you cant mean that, he did not! He wouldn't, not…not when he had us here, not when we needed him so much! He'd rather die!"
"Then that's what he is" Hermione said softly "dead. Dead and gone."
"Oh will you two please stop!" Ron said, straightening in his chair. "Yes, yes we all know he's not here, but guess what? We are and have to do the best we can. Now if you'll excuse me ladies I want to find out what my brothers are up to." With that he heaved himself from the chair and slouched over to where Fred, George, Bill and Charlie were sitting and promptly pulled out a chair and pulled the map towards himself.
"Ginny-"
"Save it Hermione." The younger woman replied shortly and stalked from the room. Hermione followed her out but took a different route, up to the master bedroom. She closed the door behind her and slide down against it. She stared out into the room, sparkling clean, just like the day it was finished. She remembered it so well - three years ago Hermione, Ginny and Molly had spent so so long scrubbing, cleaning and decorating in here, transforming it from a hippogriff's den to a gorgeous bedroom. That evening they waited for hours for Harry to come back and see what they had done for him. They waited and waited, and waited. But he never did come back.
Three years into Voldemort's rise to power and he still wasn't here. Ginny was still waiting. Hermione wasn't.
They had done all they could to slow down Voldemort, hoping that he would struggle to find followers but the sheer cowardice of the wizarding world had amazed Hermione - over three hundred known witches and wizards had openly turned to Voldemort in the past three years, and he gained more everyday. As to the number secretly going to him? Who knows. Countless.
With the death of Dumbledore and the disappearance of Harry Potter, the courage of the wizarding world began to fail - who would fight now? Hermione believed that they could have coped with one loss, but to lose their two most prominent hopes in one week? It was a blow too great for many to bear, a few had lost all faith and chose to end their lives rather than live in the dark times that would surely follow. For that, Hermione held Harry solely responsible.
But still, no small number of brave witches and wizards chose to fight, and Voldemort found his rise met with huge resistance. In that first dark year countless humans and magical beasts had died. The fighting slowed in the first months of the second year, giving way to small skirmishes, hiding and plotting. In that second year many 'accidents' happened to muggles, who still did not know that the wizarding world existed, although many knew that something was very, very wrong in the world, but no one had yet voiced publicly their suspicions, turning instead to the likes of terrorism, anarchists and even aliens to explain the unexplainable. Of course no one was going to even mention the word magic. It doesn't exist, everyone knows that…
While the muggles lived on in their blinkered lives the magical world was shattering year by year. The leaders of the Dark forces were, of course, Voldemort and his ever faithful few Death Eaters who had been with him since the beginning. Those few were known to all as 'the faithful'. No other recruit of Voldemort's faction gained access to that inner circle, they were too secure, too careful.
While in the forces of so-called 'good', nearly a thousand witches and wizards made up the ranks. How many of them were spies? Who knows. Too many. A thousand wizards are too many to trust implicitly, but the few that could be trusted were part of the tightest ranks of the 'army' - the Order of the Phoenix. No one, absolutely no one outside the Order knew who exactly was in it, only the most prominent members, like Hermione Granger, the Weasley brothers and sister, the Hogwarts teachers etc who let it be known that they were the Order. The other members were supposed 'nobodies', and no one would ever suspect them. For example Mundungus "Dung" Fletcher would often be heard placing bets with various shady characters as to who was Order and who was not, and not a soul suspected that he was one of the trusted few.
In this way the Order of the Phoenix kept its secrets safe, and plotted and counter-plotted against Voldemort and his Death Eaters and the past year had gone by at an impasse between the two groups, each waiting for the other to make the first major mistake.
Hermione groaned and put her head in her hands. The tension was too high, the stalemate and the relative 'peace' it brought with it could not last. And when hell finally broke loose, she would be there, wand raised, shouting out the first curses with the best of them. She knew it, and was ready.